Talk:1724: Proofs
Judging from my experience when I first encountered proofs in math classes (or my general experience from math classes), the teacher is going to write down a "proof" which makes absolutely no sense to students and is also never explained in a way that actually makes them understand. Instead, they are just going to use "dark magic" and write what seems to be completely senseless to students. 141.101.91.223 04:24, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
Transcript generated by the BOT was murdering me, had to change it. Proposing miss Lenhart is party 1. EppOch (talk) 04:45, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
- I support that. 141.101.91.223 06:13, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
- Me to, but I am on mobile, so editing is a pain 162.158.86.71 06:51, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
- Done Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 08:26, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
- Note that the BOT doesn't create any text - see here. The transcript was made by several people. Agree completely that this is Miss Lenhart, but even if it was not "party 1 and party 2" is not the way to describe a woman with long blonde hair and Cueball ;-) There is at the moment a discussion what to call other women looking like this (i.e. those that are not clearly Miss Lenhart, Mrs. Roberts or her daughter Elaine Roberts). Chip in there if you have any opinions on that regard... --Kynde (talk) 11:01, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
Irrationality proof isn't really a proof by contradiction (it doesn't use double negation elimination). You're showing (exists a,b. ...) -> False by assuming (exists a, b. ...) and showing False, which is implication introduction --162.158.85.105 07:33, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
I'm thinking she's doing one of those proof that write down a formula or function out of nowhere, and proceeds to proof everything with it. 108.162.222.125 08:43, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
This comic reminds me of "divination" rituals, where a magical spirit is summoned to write out an answer. Usually not something as complex as here, but hey, XKCD! --Henke37 (talk) 10:04, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
Man, Reductio ad absurdum never made any logic. If we could assume any thing, why use logic? Oh wait, it has already been covered in XKCD 162.158.49.12 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
"Dark magic" proofs are centered around properties of functions, and abstract concepts, rather than manipulating the functions themselves?? 108.162.246.113 11:26, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
My assumptions is that the "Dark Magic" being referred to here is more "A technique that works, though nobody really understands why." [see http://catb.org/jargon/html/B/black-magic.html] In this case, the teacher is setting up a proof in an manner which will lead to the desired goal, but to the student it is exceedingly unobvious as to why one would do it this way, other than "it works" 108.162.219.52 15:30, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
I was thinking that a "dark magic proof" referred to those ridiculous "party trick" proofs like 'proving' that 1 = 0 via some confusing train of logic, and mathematical sleight of hand. 108.162.237.213 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
Maybe he meant "dark patterns"? 162.158.126.139 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
It seems pretty obvious to me that by "weird, dark magic proofs", the student is talking about proofs that drag in far-flung reaches of mathematics so distant that they no longer appear to be mathematics, especially ones that involve meta-reasoning. Gödel's proof of the incompleteness of Peano arithmetic is the archetypical example, but others include Lob's theorem and any proof by contradiction involving the halting problem. Ms Lenhart's proof starts out by setting up a proof-by-contradiction, already a warning sign, and she then escalates it at the end by implying that this proof will somehow involve the actual physics of where the solution can and cannot be written. 108.162.241.123 17:27, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
"In the title text the decision of whether to take the axiom of choice is made by a deterministic process. The axiom of determinacy is incompatible with the axiom of choice..." The axiom of determinacy is not really relevant to deterministic processes - it is about (certain types of two-players-) games and says that any such game is determined (that is, some player has a winning strategy). So this axiom is not relevant to the title text --162.158.83.66 17:39, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
